With 21 sponsored varsity sports, LSU is a powerhouse of athletics within the NCAA and the SEC.

When Tiger fans think of the ‘Big Three’ sports on LSU’s campus, the programs that come to mind are often football, baseball and women’s basketball.

Yet back in the seventies, there was another team that was considered to be a part of this trio. That was the men’s gymnastics team, which reigned for 16 years on the bayou.

“Bill Bankhead started the men’s gymnastics program,” said former gymnast and LSU men’s gymnastics associate coach Caesar Garcia. “He did so many different things and took over the assembly center and brought in any artist who was anybody performing there.”

Bankhead, an LSU Athletics hall of famer, brought in Jerry George to coach the men’s team in 1968, when the program originally started.

George dedicated his life to gymnastics and was ushered out of retirement by Bankhead, or as Garcia would put it, Bankhead “resurrected” the former gymnast after he suffered injury at the NCAA finals while competing at Michigan State University.

In his resurrection, George returned to gymnastics at LSU, where he not only coached the Tigers to their first NCAA Championship appearance, but earned a doctorate in kinesiology as well.

If the sport of men’s college gymnastics is new to you, let’s do a quick overview on the sport itself and how it differs from women’s gymnastics.

Male gymnasts compete across six events: floor exercise, the horizontal bar, the vertical bar, vault, rings and pommel horse. Women’s gymnastics overlaps with only two events, floor exercise and the vault. However, the gymnasts’ performances on the floor often greatly differ in terms of aggression.

“Men tumbling on a floor exercise area and women tumbling on a floor exercise are two different beasts,” said former LSU women’s gymnastics head coach D-D Breaux.

As described by Gymnast Gem, women’s floor routines are “part performance, part gymnastics” and men’s routines are rooted in “athletic skill” where gymnasts’ strengths are greatly challenged.

In addition to the difference in events and routines, women’s gymnastics is subject to higher viewership because it is more popular than men’s gymnastics. For example, there are 86 NCAA women’s gymnastics programs across Divisions I, II and III, where there are only 15 men’s programs, with 12 of those being Division I and three of them in Division III.

With LSU’s men’s gymnastics reign coming to close in 1984, an even greater question lies: Why did the program end?

Well, the answer is similar to the reason why there’s only 15 men’s gymnastic teams in the NCAA, the sport isn’t as popular, and that lack of viewership may be the reason that LSU isn’t likely to bring the program back.

“I think LSU is filling the needs of the sports where it needs to,” Breaux said. “Like tennis and golf, we have so many athletes in high school that run track and we have an incredible track program. So I think we’re filling the needs of most of the population of our athletes in secondary school.”

In addition to meeting those needs of incoming student athletes across the nation, another primary consideration is the cost of the program’s facility and equipment.

Breaux reflected on her work to raise money for LSU women’s gymnastics and its facility and fight for its place at the university. But the likeliness of that succeeding for a sport with decreasing viewership remains low.

Yet, even as time passes, it is the sport of gymnastics’ nature, and its fans’ responsibility to keep its history alive.

“We’re [former men’s gymnastics team members] dwindling in numbers,” Garcia said. “And the sadness is that when we’re gone, that’s it.”

Garcia commented on the fact that all of the former team’s existing memorabilia at LSU is now gone. He recounted that the team used to have photographs of their All-American accolades in the PMAC, photographs that have since disappeared, leading the fading memory of the program.

The only effort that has been made to truly document the program’s history comes from the women’s program, inviting remaining former team members and staff to alumni events and even displaying one of the men’s team’s former trophies in its facility.

“They didn’t have to do that,” Garcia said. “That started a few years back and we are most appreciative.”

Garcia recounted how last year at a gymnastic alumni event, former LSU men’s gymnast Greg Lewis, who suffers from ALS, saw his team’s trophy on the shelf of the women’s facility and remembered everything that he had worked for in the sport of gymnastics at LSU.

“He looked up and saw at the very top of the trophy case one of our trophies,” Garcia said. “And it just melted his heart and he was in tears to finally find a remnant of his past.”

For Garcia, he’s kept his passion for the sport alive by hosting reunions for the team’s remaining members at his own will, and through his business, C.G.’s Gymnastics in Baton Rouge.

But as the sport fades nationally, and on campus, Garcia is working to keep his and his teammates’ story alive.

“There is no future,” Garcia said. “All we have is our history.”